


dear doubt

by themorninglark



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Magic Realism, Oikawa figuring his life out, Plants, Post-Canon, Stars, dealing with change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 13:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13125066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: The abandoned way station out by the slip road was just as Iwaizumi had described it, which was how his uncle had described it, for even Iwaizumi himself had not laid eyes on the place since they were children. It was a glorified shack badly in need of three new coats of paint and a coffee machine.Iwaizumi had the latter, and Oikawa, fortunately, the former. He had picked out the paint himself, a sight for sore eyes in mint that made Iwaizumi raise his eyebrows.Oikawa hopped off the truck, breathed, “It’s perfect,” and meant it.In which Iwaizumi and Oikawa run a way station for travellers off the Joban Expressway, go stargazing, and aren't quite sure what to make of the vine growing up their wall.





	dear doubt

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Erin (shipperforlife12 @ tumblr) who gave me some very broad prompts that resulted in... this. It really got away from me, but I hope you like it. Have a very happy Haikyuu!! Christmas ♥
> 
> Title: ["Dear Doubt"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vTTvWWNUNw), by Michael Schulte  
>  _Dear boy, let me see the world through your eyes / With no fear of falling down, we'd just get up off the ground and then run_

 

 

It was the hottest day of the year in the entire prefecture when Oikawa took down the first cardboard box from his shelves.

He’d kept them all these years, collecting dust in the recesses of his cupboards. A part of him wanted to be romantic about it, to say with a nonchalant smile, untouched by time, that it was because he’d always known he’d leave again. The truth, as it so often was, was far more prosaic: his mother had packed up all his things when he’d been away, and he had simply been too lazy to unpack.

It was no use trying to be _romantic_ with Iwaizumi, so when Oikawa heard the scuffling of sneakers in the pathway and a steady rap of knuckles on the door, Iwaizumi’s voice calling up through his window _hey, Oikawa, you done yet?_ , he taped up the box and shouted back, _almost._

There were things he left behind: an ivy-like vine growing up his walls, a little whirlwind of yellow butterflies, the daisies at his front step and a brick with his name etched into it in a wobbly hand. _Tooru_ , aged five, and under it, _Hajime_. The vine wound its way round it like an evergreen embrace.

 

* * *

 

So summer went: they loaded all of their boxes onto the back of a secondhand truck that Iwaizumi had bought for a song, and took off down the highway. The truck rattled as Iwaizumi drove. Oikawa rolled down the window, settled in for a long ride and promptly fell asleep to the beat of a rock song from their high school days.

“You should have woken me up,” he grumbled, yawning, as he woke to a breeze from the sea tickling his nose, and blinked open his eyes to a distant glint of blue beyond the road.

Iwaizumi’s gaze flicked over to him for a moment. “Why? Were you having a bad dream or something? You sure were snoring fit for it.”

Oikawa sniffed. “I wasn’t dreaming. But wasn’t it lonely without my sparkling conversation?”

“You mean peaceful.” Iwaizumi leaned back in his seat, smiling. “So very peaceful.”

“I’m only _not_ kicking you right now because you’re driving—”

“Oh yes, nothing to do with the gear stick and the glove box in between us.”

“You underestimate my flexibility,” said Oikawa. He shucked off his sneakers, pulled one knee up to his chest and waggled his toes at Iwaizumi’s armpit.

“I never underestimate anything about you. Now will you stop distracting me so I can _drive_?”

Oikawa grinned, cranked his seat back and stretched his legs out. Before long, the signs to Ibaraki Prefecture signalled a crossing of some boundary, and the salt on the air gave way to a lazy kind of humidity and pollen. In the distance, the Ferris wheel on the waterfront at the Hitachi Seaside Park winked in and out of sight on the horizon, at the end of a field dotted with the season’s last poppies.

 

* * *

 

The abandoned way station out by the slip road was just as Iwaizumi had described it, which was how his uncle had described it, for even Iwaizumi himself had not laid eyes on the place since they were children. It was a mercy, in Oikawa’s estimation, that the door had not yet fallen off its hinges and the windows remained intact. It was a glorified shack badly in need of three new coats of paint and a coffee machine.

Iwaizumi had the latter, and Oikawa, fortunately, the former. He had picked out the paint himself, a sight for sore eyes in mint that made Iwaizumi raise his eyebrows.

Oikawa hopped off the truck, breathed, “It’s perfect,” and meant it.

The reeds by the roadside, growing wild, stirred in the warm wind. The swirling dust nipped at his heels. Iwaizumi pulled up and stopped at an ungainly angle, left the engine running and came round to stand next to Oikawa, arms crossed.

“Only you would say a place like this was perfect,” he said.

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“It’s falling apart no matter which way you look at it, right?”

Oikawa made a frame with his hands, made a great show of peering through it and surveyed the way station like it was a photograph. “That’s what makes it perfect, Iwa-chan. We’re going to make _something_ out of it.”

“Something, huh?” Iwaizumi’s eyebrows rose, in that barely perceptible way of his, the way that most people thought signalled a healthy dose of scepticism; only for Oikawa had the gesture ever telegraphed a measure of blind faith, faith that Oikawa had seized and hung on to, sometimes twisted into a shape that pleased him, selfishly.

Oikawa took a deep breath.

“Something amazing,” he declared, as bravely as he felt, turning back to face the house.

Iwaizumi took a step forward and leaned over to give the doorframe a sturdy shove. It shook, but didn’t gave way, and Iwaizumi’s mouth twitched into something almost like a smile. _Perfect,_ Oikawa thought again.

“I’ll settle for something where the roof won’t cave in,” said Iwaizumi.

“That’s pretty amazing too,” Oikawa concurred, agreeably.

Iwaizumi reached for the ring of keys at his belt. “Well. Let’s go in and see what kind of dump my uncle’s foisted off on us.”

 

* * *

 

They’d come armed with a portable FM radio that Iwaizumi had salvaged from the storeroom in his old house, a place they used to play hide and seek. Oikawa knew the nooks and crannies of it better than he knew his own bedroom.

On his part, he had brought an earworm from the car fresh on his lips as accompaniment, and a single stray daisy petal that had fallen on his shoelace on his way out.

This was what they had, for starters: high ceilings, a handful of dust, and rafters that immediately looked, to Oikawa, like a good place for a heart to perch, or the kind of flower that thrived on sunlight.

It wasn’t much, but they’d made more of less.

 

* * *

 

_Dear Iwa-chan—_

Oikawa found the letter on the bottom of a box, still roughly folded, in its envelope. It wasn’t on fancy paper or anything, just whatever he could find lying around his dorm during that semester abroad. In fact, now that he thought about it, the chances were high that he had stolen it off the notepad on his roommate’s desk.

He sat down in the stairwell and let the paper unfold itself, accordion-like, in his hands. A blank sheet greeted him, with the first line crossed out and rewritten several times.

_Dear Iwa-chan, are you alive after mid-terms? I won’t forgive your premature death, you know._

_Dear Iwa-chan, I ate all the energy bars you sent me. Even the chocolate one I was supposed to save for my first big match. Sorry! Send more? (ノ_ ゜▽゜ _)_

_Dear Iwa-chan, I hope you’ve been okay._

_Dear Iwa-chan, I—_

He set the paper down. There were more envelopes in the bottom of the box, and he picked up the small stack, leafed through them one by one. One smelled faintly like sandalwood, a cologne he’d last used five years ago; one smelled like Air Salonpas. One was crumpled in the corner where he’d shoved it in the bottom of his bag, in a hurry at the airport. One bore a hotel monogram from America. Oikawa winced as he took out the letter inside, remembering the terrible stomach ache he’d had the day before that particular tournament.

 _Dear Iwa-chan, everything sucks and my stomach hurts,_ it began.

“I can’t imagine why you didn’t bother to finish such an inane letter.”

“Iwa-chan!” Oikawa yelped, clutching the letter to his chest as his head snapped back. Iwaizumi was standing on the step behind him, squinting over his shoulder. “This is _private_!”

“Uh-huh. It says _Dear Iwa-chan_ right on top.”

“Also, I was suffering. Did you know that? _Suffering._ It’s very uncharitable of you to be making fun of my suffering, even in retrospect.”

Iwaizumi reached down, plucked the letter from Oikawa’s hands, smoothed it out and read in a monotone. “ _This is a god-forsaken land of questionable food. I want milk bread. Why did I ever come here?_ ”

“As you can see,” Oikawa sniffed, “I was suffering very eloquently.”

Iwaizumi cuffed him on the top of his head and leaned back against the bannister. “Suffering for your dreams. I see.”

“That’s right. I’ll have you know my stomach made great sacrifices in the pursuit of this dream.”

“I can see that,” Iwaizumi said, deadpan, and tucked the letter into his pocket as he made his way down the stairs. “Are you going to put together your trophy shelf now, or what?”

“Oi, are you giving that letter back to me?”

Iwaizumi paused on the bottom step and turned around to shoot Oikawa a pointed look. “Like I said, it says _Dear Iwa-chan_ right on top, doesn’t it?”

Oikawa, a protest on the tip of his tongue, felt it fizzle away into a sparkling kind of nothing at the sight of Iwaizumi’s grin. Next to him, a shoot of green was sprouting from a crack in the wooden floorboards, and had started to drink in the sunlight.

 

* * *

 

On their first night, Oikawa heard a shuffling in the corridor.

He did not turn around. He knew that footstep like an echo in his heart. He had heard it before, in common dormitories where the sleeping bags muffled all the sound; he had heard it in the doorway to his childhood bedroom, and it paused abruptly now as Iwaizumi took a soft breath, mumbled something about coming in.

It would have been futile to pretend he was asleep, so Oikawa buried his head in his pillow and let out an agreeable hum.

He did not turn around, even when the sound of a futon being dragged across the floor followed in Iwaizumi’s footsteps; this, too, was a familiarity hung like a jacket on a weathered hook, Iwa-chan pulling his mattress closer to Oikawa’s so they could share the blankets, Iwa-chan trying and failing to keep his snoring quiet, Iwa-chan kicking him in his sleep.

It was Iwa-chan’s fault, Oikawa was fond of saying, that he grew up to become such an insomniac. He had forgotten, long ago, if this was true or not. Either way, Iwaizumi had long ceased to show any remorse for it, countering with the fact that it was Oikawa’s fault he had half the wrinkles in his brow he did (and the truth of this, Oikawa could not deny).

Tonight, he kept his gilded tongue still and let Iwaizumi lay out his futon close enough to touch, and after a few minutes of listening to Iwaizumi’s breathing settle, Oikawa nudged himself over so their blankets overlapped again.

 _Just like old times._ He wanted to say it, so bad it was burning up the back of his throat, like the summer itself, like the sweltering embrace of the humid night all around them. But it seemed unnecessarily nostalgic, and perhaps, just plain unnecessary.

It was just like old times, but it was not; they were older now, and Iwaizumi had changed his laundry detergent when he was in university. His sheets smelled like lemon instead of lavender, and he slept on his side and did not sprawl out to kick Oikawa in the ankles any more.

Still, he was there, and Oikawa slept easier in a strange new place for it.

 

* * *

 

Between them, they came to an agreement. At least, that was what Oikawa deigned to tell Hanamaki when he visited one week in, their first houseguest: having selected the questionable mint green for the way station’s exterior, he had magnanimously permitted Iwaizumi to be in charge of the furniture and other interior decor.

“Which is _why_ ,” he said, as he hammered the last nail into their photo wall, “everything is so awfully _brown and white and wooden_.”

“You mean tasteful,” Iwaizumi muttered, from the kitchen counter. “Besides, if you’d taken care of the furniture, we wouldn’t have any. Just a pile of beanbags.”

“I mean _monotonous_. And what’s wrong with a pile of beanbags! Hand me that frame, will you, Makki?”

Hanamaki tossed his jacket over the back of a sofa and picked up a photo frame from the floor, where it lay next to one of Oikawa’s cardboard boxes. He snickered softly.

“You’re wearing the same T-shirts in this photo.”

Oikawa grinned. “Our mothers thought matching us would be _cute_.”

Iwaizumi’s groan only made Hanamaki laugh again, and Oikawa hung the photograph up next to one of all their old teammates in the Seijou gym. Matsukawa had Iwaizumi in a headlock and Oikawa stood behind them both, making bunny ears over their heads; Hanamaki was over to the side, one arm on Matsukawa’s shoulder and the other around Kunimi, who’d managed to crack a smile that seemed halfway awake for this picture.

“Coffee?” Iwaizumi offered.

Hanamaki sat down on an armrest. “Yeah. Coffee sounds good.”

“Not for me,” Oikawa sang. He put the hammer down and got to his feet, rocked back on his heels for a moment as he stretched his arms overhead. “I’m going to weed the front porch.”

Iwaizumi raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been working all day. The weeds can wait a bit.”

“The light’s almost gone,” said Oikawa, looking up. The shadows were growing long across the rafters.

The scent of fresh coffee trailed after him as he shut the door, looked out at the open highway, the cars coming and going like a steady river. He and Iwaizumi had replaced some of the old planks on the porch the day before, and it filled Oikawa with tremendous satisfaction to press his toes into the grain of the wood, feel them solid beneath his feet. They were bare, and he had not thought to slip on a pair of shoes as he walked out; the ground had been in the sun all afternoon, and it was still warm on his soles.

He bent down and started on the weeds. Overhead, a crow flew by, then another. He heard Hanamaki’s voice drift through the wafting curtains, and glanced up, a smile on his face for no one to see.

“Iwa-chan,” he murmured. “When did you become the sort of person who would think of buying _curtains_?”

 

* * *

 

When Oikawa Tooru was five years old, he had planted a row of sunflowers along the strip of soil that divided his house from the ditch out back, the one that led to the river, a river which, eventually, led to Iwaizumi’s house, if he followed the reeds downstream.

What he remembered was not how brightly they bloomed, but the smell of damp earth on his hands, the way it crumbled through his fingers. The neighbours said they had never seen such beautiful sunflowers before, and Oikawa noticed wild daisies had sprung up in his flowerbed, between his toes where he stood. Those, he had not planted. They had blown in on a wind from the west.

There were no sunflowers here, out in the middle of the highway. What they had was an untamed field of dry, wayward grasses, weeds that stood tall and defiant in the face of an unrelenting summer, and the vine growing up the wall near their stairwell.

 

* * *

 

“It looks like the one that used to grow outside your window,” said Iwaizumi.

Oikawa crouched down and poked at the root of the vine. It had started to wind its way around the sunbeams that spilled down the stairwell, sprouted tiny leaves with smooth edges and a brave, tentative single bud.

“Do you think it followed me here?”

Iwaizumi shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s happened to you.”

“No.” Oikawa smiled. “S’pose not.”

He pressed his palm against the wall, and came away with a fistful of daisy petals that had not been there before. When he opened his hand, they fluttered away on a rising wind and drifted out the open window.

“I wonder if it will bloom before summer ends,” said Oikawa.

Iwaizumi looked up. He was behind the TV, fiddling with the antenna, and there was a pleasant kind of staticky buzz in the air that provided a surprisingly harmonious counterpoint for Iwaizumi’s own tuneless humming. Oikawa, who had not watched any TV aside from volleyball matches for longer than he cared to admit, did not care too much whether the satellite channels worked as long as they could use the TV for video games, but Iwaizumi pointed out this sort of thing was attractive in a rest stop and if they were going to turn this way station into a place people _actually_ wanted to visit, a TV would do wonders for the atmosphere.

“It doesn’t have much time. What kind of plant _is_ it, anyway?” Iwaizumi asked.

“Heck if _I_ know.”

“Aren’t you the one with the green thumb?”

“This one’s different,” said Oikawa. He ran his fingertip over the bud at the top of the vine, so delicate. It had been a long time since he’d used those sensitive fingers for what they were trained to do, a long time since he’d touched a volleyball.

 _Retirement doesn’t suit you,_ his coach had said, after the press conference. He’d patted Oikawa on the shoulder and left it at that. He had not said, _you’ll be back,_ but it had hung in the air between them like an unbearable sigh, and Oikawa had grit his teeth against half-formed resolutions and gone home with his head held so high he thought he might get a crick in his neck. Not that he’d ever have admitted it to anyone, of course.

_And for his next trick, Oikawa Tooru is going to disappear._

“I don’t know,” he said to Iwaizumi. “Maybe I’m losing my touch. It’s been a while.”

Iwaizumi flicked a switch. The static stopped, for a moment, and fuzzed into something that could have been a weather report, or a bit of old jazz on some rural music channel. He let out a soft _tch_ and turned the TV off. The sudden silence filled the space like something yet to bloom, like the tiny bud under Oikawa’s fingertip, like the rest of his life.

“Idiot. I didn’t ask you to come out with me all the way here into the middle of fucking nowhere for you to say things like _maybe I’m losing my touch_ , Oikawa.”

“Maybe I came out all the way here so that you would say things like that to me,” said Oikawa lightly.

Iwaizumi sat down on the floor. He rubbed his eyes, then stared at the TV for a while. “Do you think this is mad?”

“Well, that depends on what _this_ is. If you’re talking about fixing the TV—”

“Don’t make me throw something at you.”

“Such violence! What would the baby flowers think?”

Iwaizumi let out a snort of laughter. He tilted his head back to gaze up at the rafters, then raised one hand to wave vaguely at the TV, across the living room, the stairwell, and turned to look at Oikawa again.

“I mean, all this. We don’t know the first thing about making a place like this work. All I know is how to... how to sit at a desk and crunch numbers.”

“Yeah. And all I know how to do is play volleyball.”

Iwaizumi grinned. Oikawa felt a smile break out on his face, a glimmer he wore on his lips like second-hand moonshine, all the brighter for having been around.

“It _is_ mad. You weren’t even back one month before you started rubbing off on me.”

“That’s rude,” Oikawa declared. “I’ve been rubbing off on you our _whole lives_.”

Iwaizumi did throw something at him, then; a towel he’d been wearing round his waist all afternoon while he worked on tuning up the truck. It hit Oikawa in the side of his head and left the slightest grease stain on Oikawa’s cheek, and Oikawa, too lazy to clean it off, wore it like a trophy of war the rest of the evening.

 

* * *

 

 _It’s not much_ , Iwaizumi had warned Oikawa, when he’d first asked him along.

They had been playing video games in Oikawa’s bedroom, Oikawa surrounded by a bed of cushions and Iwaizumi sitting on the one he always used, the olive green one that had grown frayed at the corners and had an _Iwa-chan_ -shaped dent in the stuffing.

They had been playing video games on a Thursday afternoon, for Iwaizumi had finally quit his office job and he didn’t want to talk about it, for, he said, there was nothing to say, and Oikawa thought he understood that, and this was a thing they did: play video games to pass the time, till Oikawa got fed up of always losing and threw the controller at Iwaizumi’s face, flouncing downstairs in search of ice cream.

Except that day, it had been Oikawa who had won, and Iwaizumi had set down his controller and leaned back on his hands and looked at Oikawa, a question on his mouth like he had been forming it all afternoon long.

_It’s not much. But—_

Oikawa tossed his head back, opened his eyes, closed them again with a smile like the oncoming summer on his face.

 _When are we going?_ was all he asked.

He had been to Iwaizumi’s uncle’s way station once in his life, and he had not remembered it until he returned. They had been eight and Oikawa had begged his parents to let him go with Iwa-chan’s family on a day trip to the Hitachi Seaside Park, and they had ridden in a truck just like this one, and Oikawa had gleefully counted all the bumps in the road and the birds in the air until he reached a hundred and Iwaizumi had fallen asleep, drooling onto Oikawa’s shoulder.

Even for what passed for its heyday, back then, the way station had felt like a strangely remote oasis in the middle of the Joban Expressway. Not a terminus, not a motel. Just a rest stop with a payphone that drivers could use if they needed, stocked with _kakigori_ in the summer and _oden_ in the winter and piping hot coffee all the time, and a squishy couch with an old PlayStation attached to the TV. Iwaizumi’s uncle had let them play catch outside with a baseball he dug out from a box of old sports paraphernalia.

Standing in the middle of the living room they’d refurbished so painstakingly, with his photographs lining the wall and a cactus Iwaizumi had contributed for the windowsill, Oikawa held on to that distant memory like a ribbon of halcyon light. There was much he remembered, and much he could not, much that had slipped away when he had been busy looking elsewhere. He did not remember being in this room, or what they’d played here, but he remembered the smell of pine and it lingered, still, in the corners, in the cupboards they had not replaced.

 

* * *

 

They put up a sign by the highway that said _Coffee, snacks and rest: next exit, 500m_ , and Oikawa was pleased to learn that, no matter what he’d thought he might have lost, there was something he could still boast: a knack for welcomes, a winning smile, and knowing just what people needed when they walked through the door.

Iwaizumi stayed behind the counter and made the coffee. There were times, as well, when his attention to misbehaving vehicles was needed, and when Oikawa put his foot down and insisted on getting his hands just as dirty, Iwaizumi obliged with no protest whatsoever and a raised eyebrow.

“I didn’t think you’d want to muck around in engines,” he remarked, the first time Oikawa emerged triumphant from the hood of a car, a slick of oil on his face.

Oikawa waved the wrench in his hand at Iwaizumi. It was more slippery than he’d realised, and he promptly dropped it on his own feet, with an undignified yowl that made Iwaizumi burst out into a throaty guffaw.

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa huffed, after retrieving the wrench and tossing it into the toolbox, “when have you _ever_ known me to back down from a challenge?”

“It’s car repairs. Not some kind of sports showdown,” said Iwaizumi.

Oikawa wrinkled his nose in dissatisfaction. “It’s still something I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing how to do things, you know.”

Iwaizumi grinned. He reached out, took a step closer and landed a fist bump squarely on Oikawa’s chest; his fist lingered there awhile against Oikawa’s heartbeat, and Oikawa resisted the urge to close his eyes, let this take root into his veins.

“Just like you. Stubborn as hell.”

“Surely you hadn’t expected me to change that much, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa murmured.

Iwaizumi let his fist fall as he bent down to pack up the toolbox. “One day, you’re gonna want to learn to drive the truck, and then my insurance premiums will go through the roof.”

Oikawa clapped his hands together and beamed. “That’s a _brilliant_ idea! Why didn’t I think of that? How hard can it be? It’s just... a big car.”

“I’m getting rusty,” Iwaizumi muttered, shaking his head. “Gotta start watching what I say around you again.”

“As if you _ever_ needed to,” said Oikawa, and smiled.

 

* * *

 

“Did your uncle ever name this way station anything?” Oikawa asked, one day.

He was sitting on the couch with a nail file, because old habits, as it turned out, were not so easily discarded along with a past life, and he simply _could not_ abide having his nails untrimmed and ragged.

Iwaizumi shook his head. “No. I don’t know. Maybe he did. But he was a practical sort of guy, so it would probably have been something like... _House_.”

“ _House_.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s like naming a restaurant _Restaurant_.”

“What’s wrong with calling something like it is?”

Oikawa felt an old laugh bubble up from inside him, a champagne-pink laugh. He set down his nail file and stretched out across the couch, a cushion propping up his neck so he had a good view of the rafters, where dust motes danced a waltz in the sunlight.

Ushijima had brought them the cushions and a fruit basket, when he dropped by, uninvited; Oikawa had shoved the basket on top of the fridge where he wouldn’t have to look at it too often, but the cushions were too comfortable to stash out of sight. He had changed the covers on them anyway, and spent a whole week devoting himself to bad embroidery just for the satisfaction of telling visitors he had _hand-stitched_ these beautiful cushion covers with lilies and roses, and Iwaizumi had got some _Doraemon_ Band-Aids for his fingertips and remarked it might be one of the most pigheaded things Oikawa had done yet out of sheer pettiness. Oikawa took this as a compliment.

He flicked a cushion upwards with his toes now and caught it as it fell, hugging roses to his chest.

“To name a place,” he said, “is to make it real.”

Iwaizumi looked around. “This place seems plenty real to me.”

Oikawa smiled. Another bud had formed on the vine by the stairwell.

“I guess it does,” he said.

 

* * *

 

They had never got round to discussing opening hours, and by the time they had the place up and running, it seemed a moot point. Time off the road had done nothing to fix Oikawa’s screwed-up body clock, and here in the silences and white noise that drew on longer than he could have imagined, in the shadows of the mountain and the falling moonlight at 3 AM, it didn’t take much more than the sound of a car pulling up outside to wake him up.

Softly, he would pad across Iwaizumi’s futon, make his way downstairs and greet visitors with a whispered _hello_ , a milk box from the counter, and all the stories he had to tell, or all the listening, depending on what they needed. 3 AM, Oikawa had learned, was an unpredictable time, and he never could tell what the capricious winds would bring.

Some things had not changed: Iwaizumi remained a sound sleeper, and it never once crossed their minds to swap the positions of their futons, for Oikawa always slept by the window and Iwaizumi always slept by the door, and it had been that way since Oikawa declared that Iwaizumi was older and bigger and should protect him from things that went _bump_ in the night.

Years would pass, and he never told Iwaizumi that sometimes, these things came in through the window. He was the bigger one, now. They didn’t talk about that, either.

 

* * *

 

_Dear Iwaizumi Hajime-san—_

The mail was in too neat a pile to have been thrown on the table without thought.

Oikawa picked up the letter, lying next to an open envelope with a Tokyo postmark and Iwaizumi’s name on it. It was Iwaizumi who had brought in the post today, and perhaps he had become the kind of person who left his letters lying around by accident for someone like Oikawa to read, but then again, perhaps he had not.

The paper felt heavy in his hand. Good quality stock. There was a logo at the top he _thought_ he recognised—no, he knew it, as Iwaizumi would have too, at first sight. Lying to himself was an art Oikawa had, at turns, excelled and failed terribly at.

_Greetings from Meiji University!_

On the wall, the vine trembled, so minutely that Oikawa did not see it. A leaf curled in on itself and fell to the floor. It was the first, and later, the wind would pick it up with a sigh and sweep it out the crack under the door, with an infinite gentleness.

 

* * *

 

“Did you read my letter?” Iwaizumi asked when he came home, without preamble.

Of course he would have known. Of course he’d put that letter right on top on purpose. In that aggravatingly practical _Iwa-chan_ way, he would have thought it through and figured in the end that it would save time telling Oikawa if he just read it himself.

“ _Okaeri_ ,” said Oikawa, and waved the letter at him from the couch.

“ _Tadaima,_ " Iwaizumi murmured, as he crossed the room and plucked the letter back out of Oikawa’s hand.

Oikawa, his head tipped back, wondered what it would be like to see the house from up there among the rafters. _Not much._ He heard it in Iwaizumi’s voice, still. Not much, just a dusty summer-soaked footprint he’d left on the welcome mat, a half-open door, a greeting for the leaving and returning, and cushions he had pricked his fingers on.

Iwaizumi cleared his throat. Oikawa took it as his cue to say something.

“That’s an awfully attractive salary your _alma mater’s_ offering you.”

“I don’t know why Head Coach Yamakawa even thought of me,” Iwaizumi muttered. “I helped out a few times right after graduating, but I’ve never _coached_ before.”

Oikawa sat up and turned around, resting his head on his forearms across the back of the coach. He pursed his lips, looked up at Iwaizumi, and smiled. “I think you’d be good at it.”

Iwaizumi frowned. “Why?”

“Because you have the patience of a _saint_. Besides, take it from me and my wealth of coaching experience.”

“At Lil’ Tykes.”

“ _Please_ , if anything, coaching kids is way worse than coaching university students! They won’t listen, they ask too many questions, they have _zero_ attention span—”

“What a coincidence,” Iwaizumi remarked. “You sound like you’re talking about yourself.”

Oikawa’s indignant yelp was smothered by Iwaizumi’s snort of laughter. He settled for a petulant sniff instead, and as the moment passed, Iwaizumi’s gaze met his, fleeting, before searching out the floor, the view from the windows, anywhere else.

“So?” Oikawa asked.

“So what?”

“So, will you take the job?”

“Meiji’s not exactly round the corner, Oikawa. It’s a long drive. And I’d have to stay in Tokyo for days at a time.”

“Good thing you’re such good friends with Tobio-chan, then.”

“Only you would say _such good friends_ like it’s a bad thing.”

Oikawa laughed. The sound was butterflies in his throat, rain on his tongue, and a tiny storm that danced upon his lips. “Well, it’s not like you’d have to stay there _forever_. They just want you when it’s competition season. Honestly, you’re being stubborn—”

“Why do you want me to do it, anyway?” Iwaizumi interrupted.

As Oikawa paused, his mouth half-open and all his best intentions trapped mid-sentence, Iwaizumi ran his hand through his hair and let out an explosive sigh. He dropped his bag on the floor and came round to sit next to Oikawa on the couch, jostling him with his hip.

“It’s not like I want you to do it,” Oikawa muttered.

Iwaizumi shot him a pointed glare. Oikawa ignored it.

“It’s not like I _don’t_ want you to do it,” he added.

“As usual, Oikawa, you make _so_ much sense.”

“Ugh, stop that. I just... want you to do something for yourself, Iwa-chan,” said Oikawa.

It was the truth, and it was not. Either way, the admission was surprisingly easy to make, and Iwaizumi’s name was quieter in his mouth than it had ever been. The sound of it was suddenly unfamiliar to him, in the way of his own reflection looking stranger and stranger the more time he spent staring at it.

Iwaizumi laced his hands in his lap and leaned forward. His gaze found the tiny smudge of mint green on the coffee table top, where Oikawa had been overzealous with the paintbrush; he’d offered to paint it over, but Iwaizumi had said to let it remain.

_(Mean, Iwa-chan, you just want a constant reminder of my imperfection!_

_You idiot, I don’t need a paint smudge for that, I just need to look at your face.)_

“Isn’t this place something for myself?” Iwaizumi said.

He was close enough for Oikawa to bump him with his leg, and so Oikawa did, and Iwaizumi winced and smacked Oikawa’s thigh hard with the folded letter.

“You’re full of it, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa declared. “Don’t tell me you’re not _a little bit_ curious. Or that you don’t miss volleyball. If you were _totally uninterested_ in the job, you wouldn’t have left that letter there for me to see, right?”

“Do you have to be so pushy?” Iwaizumi grumbled, jabbing his elbow into Oikawa’s side.

“Your elbow is pointy,” Oikawa complained, and pulled his knees up, unfolding his legs brazenly into Iwaizumi’s lap as he arrayed himself across the couch, back against the armrest.

“Stupid Oikawa,” Iwaizumi muttered, but he didn’t kick him off. Oikawa watched as he leaned back too, stretched his arms outwards and pressed his lips together. They sat like that for a while, Oikawa with a milk-bread hum aching to escape the tip of his tongue, Iwaizumi with the weight of Oikawa resting upon him, and the heat of the afternoon sweetly painting itself upon the lengthening shadows, into the pine-scented corners of their house.

“Let’s not fight, Iwa-chan. It’s exhausting.”

Iwaizumi shut his eyes. “We’re not fighting.”

“No,” said Oikawa, and watched Iwaizumi close his hand around the letter, as though it were an awkward handshake he did not know how to let go of.

 

* * *

 

It was Oikawa who had packed the telescope in the first place, but it was Iwaizumi who’d suggested seeing how far their backyard went, before the nights got too cold. They would not be finding the answer tonight, for the mountains never seemed to grow any closer no matter how far they walked in one direction. Oikawa supposed that was okay. After all, they had time, for once in their lives. The knowledge still sat funny in his gut sometimes, like he’d eaten too much ice cream or spent too much time on a long bus ride.

“There,” he pointed, with a flourish.

He lay on his back, head pillowed on a mound of grass. The telescope sat on the ground between them. At nine, he should have handled it more carefully; now, it bore the nicks and dents of childhood’s casual little cruelties in much the same way Oikawa himself did. Only skin deep, except at the joints.

“There. If I were to plant a garden of stars, it’d look like _that_ one.”

Iwaizumi was still sitting upright, legs sprawled out in the field. He raised a hand to his eyes and squinted up in the direction of Oikawa’s finger.

“I’m no expert,” he said, “but that constellation looks... like... a volleyball that’s gone flat.”

“Why, Iwa-chan, that was almost poetic.”

“Calling it like I see it. What do _you_ see?”

“Mmmm,” Oikawa hummed, and paused. “Fireworks. It’s like fireworks. You know, when they explode, and make flowers in the sky, and all the sparks spread out like _this_ —”

He spread his arms wide.

“A garden of stars,” Iwaizumi repeated, like he was trying out the feel of the words in his mouth.

“You know I’ve always had a green thumb,” said Oikawa blithely.

Iwaizumi settled on his back, grass rustling under his shoulders. Oikawa cocked his head sideways, studied his best friend from this vantage point. It wasn’t anything new. Oikawa knew the shape of Iwaizumi’s face through wild daisies. What he found, now, that he did not know, were these angles that had chiselled their way into that face when he hadn’t been looking, that Iwaizumi held his lips parted as he breathed out, like there was an entire world heavy upon them.

“I know,” said Iwaizumi. “If there was anyone who could grow stars into fireworks, it would be you.”

A thousand starlike sentimentalities brimmed in the night sky between Oikawa’s arms. He let them remain where they were, sultry as exhaust and the revving of engines far behind them on the balmy winds.

 

* * *

 

As the season drew to its long, endless close, Oikawa took it upon himself to make good on his promise to learn to drive the truck. Iwaizumi, on his part, put up some token protestations.

“Are you sure this is a good idea? You’ve never driven anything bigger than your mom’s tiny Honda.”

Oikawa swept down the stairs, stole a piece of toast off Iwaizumi’s stack, and bestowed a jam-smeared smile upon him. “I drove that tiny Honda perfectly well, didn’t I?”

Iwaizumi smacked the back of Oikawa’s hand with a butter knife. “You drove it once. Ten minutes down the street to pick your mom up. And she took over once you got there.”

Oikawa downed the toast in a few mouthfuls, wiped the crumbs off his mouth, and crossed the room to the front door. Plucking the keys off the hook, he tossed them high into the air and caught them one-handed without looking.

“Like I said. I drove it _perfectly_ well.”

“This is a truck,” Iwaizumi said flatly. “It’s different.”

“I don’t see why! The pedals and the gear stick and the wheel all work the same, don’t they?”

Iwaizumi rubbed his temples and sighed. He started to speak again, met Oikawa’s gaze, frowned; Oikawa swallowed his own bright grin, felt the honeyed sweetness of it still sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“What is it, Iwa-chan? You don’t think I can do it?”

“Oikawa, look, you’ve hardly driven at all in the last five years—”

“Because I’ve been on planes. And trains. And buses.”

Iwaizumi pressed his lips together. “That’s not what I mean.”

“My volleyball skills aren’t going to help run this place. So I’d better make myself useful, right? Especially once you’re not around so much any more.”

There was a throbbing in Oikawa’s palm then, sharp and sudden, and he looked down; he had started to clench his fist tight around the truck keys, and they were digging into his hand.

“I’m—you’re not—” Iwaizumi started, then shook his head. “Well, hell, I know I’m not going to stop you if you’re dead set on it. Just don’t be reckless.”

And Oikawa found a smile in the fading summer, the last of the warm light, for Iwaizumi.

“I’m never reckless.”

 

* * *

 

In truth, he had missed being on the road, though he could not help feeling in his bones that it would be a betrayal to admit it. Who or what exactly he was betraying, Oikawa could not say; perhaps some ideal that he had spun from a golden dream in his imagination, some stubborn promise he clung to when everyone else had forgotten he’d ever made it.

He had missed this. The stories that came to their doorstep now from travellers, every one of them, was a seed he’d plant in that garden of his; there were stories, so many stories that he could tell too, but he had spent enough time telling them all and he was tired of hearing the same words over and over again falling from his lips, and the earth, too, had to be tired of these same old shoots by now.

As he hit the accelerator, swerved with a swift spin of the wheel to merge into traffic, he wondered if all this time it had been _this_ that his coach meant he’d miss. Not the volleyball itself, but the growing and the changing; that sense of always moving, the road slipping away beneath his feet, faster and faster and _faster_ —

Oikawa breathed in. His knuckles were turning white around the wheel. There was a heartbeat buried in his palms that ached, and a daisy petal on the dashboard that must have blown in with the breeze.

He glanced at the window. It was closed.

He glanced back at the petal and reached for it, a tiny thing that sat like a teardrop in his hand.

 

* * *

 

Autumn came, not in a whirlwind of brown leaves and pumpkin spiced lattes, but with a murmur that crept through the cracks of their doors and windows and drifted up to those high rafters Oikawa loved so much. It made a nest there and curled round itself like a dream unspooled from an oversized woolly sweater.

The vine growing up the wall made a tentative, earnest reach for it. Oikawa could still see the first bud, at the top of the twining stalk. It had not bloomed all summer, but neither had it wilted, and it seemed content to keep its secrets close as the weather cooled, along with the rest of its fellows. Tiny buds had continued to sprout down the vine, each one paler than the next and just as coy. The leaves, like the seasons, had started to brown around the edges, and now and then one would fall at his feet. They were a soft, glorious spectrum of sunset hues that made Oikawa think of tea and sympathy.

“I think you’re right, Iwa-chan,” he said. “I think it _is_ the vine that used to grow outside my window.”

Iwaizumi, sprawled across the couch with a jacket lying on his chest like a blanket, answered without looking up from his newspaper. “I know I’m right. How many times did I stand under that window, throwing pebbles at it?”

“You did that even after we both got phones,” said Oikawa, and laughed.

“Habit,” Iwaizumi mumbled.

“Did you ever see it bloom?” Oikawa asked. Iwaizumi shook his head.

“How curious. I wonder if it’s searching for something.”

Iwaizumi set down his paper and looked up at last. “Why?”

Oikawa leaned against the railing of the staircase and glanced out the windows. The sun, in the rare moments it peeked out from behind the rain clouds, was setting earlier these days. There was a ripening sky on the horizon, a music that sang in his bones. Faintly, he heard the whistling of the kettle in the kitchen.

“Because it wasn’t content to stay in one place. That’s how it works. You’re always searching, right?”

Iwaizumi held his gaze steady from across the room. Oikawa could not count, could not even begin to count, how often that gaze had unravelled him over the years; he felt the tug again now, another vine that lashed them both together. This one had thorns.

Outside, the wind picked up, and the road wound on.

 

* * *

 

This time, it was Oikawa’s idea to go stargazing again, for it seemed like the sort of wild thing they _should_ do when it had been windy and rainy the whole week and the ground, finally dry, was covered in fallen leaves. When he could hold the hush in his hands, when it was not that the stars shone brighter, but that the rest of the earth had started to lay itself down to rest, all the more quiet to see the light with.

“This is crazy,” said Iwaizumi. “It’s really fucking cold.”

“You wanted to be a _hero_ , Iwa-chan, and not wear gloves,” said Oikawa, waggling his gloved fingers at Iwaizumi, who swatted them out of his face, rolled his eyes and rubbed his hands together vigorously.

“Shut up,” Iwaizumi muttered, but there was no sting in it. He was looking up, his footsteps coming to a halt, and Oikawa, a whirlwind stilling, stopped to look up too.

Here, in the heart of a perfect storm, he remembered what it was to feel invincible. The carpet of leaves under his boots were still crunchy, and the spiced hot chocolate he’d drunk earlier warmed him up from inside like a fireplace, and there was a glorious clarity in the crisp air, and so he clapped his hands together, threw a bright smile at Iwaizumi and took off running.

He could hear Iwaizumi half-shouting, half-laughing, in his wake, but he did not look back, and the stars were waiting for him even as he left a trail of fading grass and leaves at his heels, as the plants retreated into the cool of the night and the embrace of autumn’s long sleep.

 _They say I have a green thumb,_ thought Oikawa, _but all I do is run away, and leave things to die._

_I can do things different this time. I can._

_And for his next trick, Oikawa Tooru is going to stay—_

Oikawa stumbled to a skidding halt at the foot of a tree, its branches bare, and flopped down to catch his breath. He felt a root dig into his back as he spread his arms across the ground. The scent was familiar and comforting.

It didn’t take Iwaizumi long to catch up. Oikawa heard him coming, even with his eyes closed.

“As the loser,” said Oikawa, cracking open one eyelid, “I think you should treat us both to an entire bottle of champagne the next time we do this. Don’t you think that’d be nice? Bubbly warming us up inside, in the snow?”

Iwaizumi sat down with a solid _thump_. The leaves flew out from under him, and he glared at Oikawa. “Why would it be _snowing_?”

“Last I heard, it snows in winter.”

“Why the hell would we be doing this in the snow?”

“Oh, we’re not just going to be doing this in the snow. We’re going to get into the truck, and _I’m_ going to drive us all the way to Hitachi Seaside Park, because the Christmas roses will be out and it’ll be _so_ quiet there without all the people who come to look at tulips in spring, and we can ride the Ferris wheel.”

“The Ferris wheel,” Iwaizumi echoed. “Oikawa, in case you forgot, the last time we rode the Ferris wheel, you cried and wouldn’t let go of my hand because you were scared of how high it was—”

“Don’t bother me with _trivialities_ , Iwa-chan. Look at the stars!”

Oikawa picked up a leaf with one hand, keeping his gaze on the night sky. He could trace the edges of it with a fingertip, that maple shape, the curves and the capillaries running through its paper-thin surface, and the stars above them seemed to bloom now that his eyes were getting used to the darkness. He looked for his garden, and found fireworks like snowdrops waiting to descend.

With his body still warm from the sprint, the scarf around his throat felt uncomfortably snug, and he reached up to loosen it. He lowered the leaf to his lips, and let it fall as he stretched his arm out next to Iwaizumi.

“You don’t need a telescope out here,” Iwaizumi said. There was wonder in his voice. “The stars are bright enough.”

“Yeah,” breathed Oikawa.

They lay in the shadow of the maple tree, of the night, for a while.

“Head Coach Yamakawa called me the other day while you were out,” said Iwaizumi.

Oikawa said nothing. He did not turn to look at Iwaizumi, did not ask questions; for once, he was in no hurry to hear answers he already knew. After a moment, he felt a pressure in his open hand. A palm mapped in calluses, in places where Iwaizumi had learned to be strong, pricking with sweat and glistening old teardrops like stars that could not be found in any sky.

Iwaizumi curled his fingers round Oikawa’s gloved ones. Oikawa wondered if he would have done that, had his hand been bare; it was a touch too intimate to be excused by waking dreams in the strange hours between dusk and dawn, and the careful delicacy of it was closer, more breathless, than any hug, any clasping of hands they’d shared in the days they stood together on the court. It was a graze that was more a scrape than a bruise. Less showy, but the scar would not fade.

“I said yes. I’m leaving tomorrow morning. I’ll be gone for a few days.”

Oikawa smiled and squeezed his hand.

“Took you long enough to decide. You sure know how to leave a man hanging,” he said.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Iwaizumi left before sunrise and Oikawa found a daisy petal in his coffee.

He did not even make a habit of drinking coffee, most mornings; having been freed from the shackles of a rigorous training diet, he delighted in all the chocolate milk he could not drink before, and sweet orange juice on days when he was, perfunctorily, feeling _healthy_.

But like the light sleeper he was, he’d woken this morning with Iwaizumi’s alarm clock, and he had buried his head in his pillow and pretended to sleep, even though Iwaizumi would know full well he was wide awake. It was not to lie, and they both knew it. It was simply to spare them a sentimentality that neither of them needed.

Oikawa had drifted off again into a fitful half-sleep as Iwaizumi puttered round the room, putting together his bag and getting dressed. The unmistakable scent of coffee wafting up the stairs woke him again, along with the sun on his eyelids.

He’d gone down, still wrapped in his blanket because Iwaizumi was not here to tell him not to drag it all over the floor, and he had found a mug of it still fresh on the countertop, with frothy milk on the top the way he liked it. Iwaizumi had not left him a note. That was just not the sort of thing Iwaizumi did.

Oikawa picked up the spoon from the sugar bowl, then set it down again and took a sip. It was already sweet.

He did not notice the daisy petal until he licked the froth off his lips, and he felt it before he saw it, a satin-white kiss that melted on his tongue.

 

* * *

 

To escape the onerous duty of fixing the heating, which saw fit to sputter and blaze in fits of fiery starts and yawning death-rattles, Oikawa took over the drives into town to stock up on supplies in Iwaizumi’s absence. Today, the Meiji University volleyball team had gone up north for a friendly and Iwaizumi had taken the train from Hitachinaka instead, so Oikawa had the truck at his disposal for a change.

Ordinarily, he’d head into Mito for groceries and gas. But today felt like a day for a long drive and an old friend who’d been dropping not-so-subtle hints about _forgetting Oikawa’s face, it’d been such a long time_ , and so Oikawa flipped the sign on their door to _CLOSED_ , jumped behind the wheel and took the highway up north in search of Matsukawa in Sendai.

Matsukawa—a Master’s student in architecture, according to him, and a hobo mooching hamburg steak off his friend, according to Hanamaki—had made a home in the city for himself out of a tiny rented apartment on top of a hair salon. The last time they’d met, Oikawa had remarked that living in such proximity to actual hairdressers seemed to have done nothing for his perpetual mop, and Matsukawa had smiled that laconic smile of his, told Oikawa that his perpetual mop was the very _pinnacle_ of style, and that he could arrange an appointment for Oikawa if he so wished.

“That offer’s still open, by the way,” said Matsukawa, as he emerged from his kitchen with a can of beer in one hand and a Vanilla Coke in the other.

Oikawa made a face at him.

Matsukawa tossed him the Coke, and grinned. “Can’t have you drinking and driving, right?”

“I’m a very careful driver—”

“Right,” Matsukawa snorted.

“And there’s nothing wrong with my hairstyle, thank you very much. Natural waves never go out of fashion.”

“You mean bedhead.”

“I said _natural_ ,” said Oikawa.

He was sitting on the bay window, which seemed to have accumulated several more cushions since his last visit, and when he stretched his legs out without thinking, he hit the edge of the window frame and yelped.

Matsukawa laughed and sat down on a bar stool. The kitchen counter was covered end-to-end with loose sheets of graph paper, sharpened pencils, and sketches that looked like so many little cubes and angles to Oikawa. “Sorry. This place isn’t quite as big as yours.”

“It’s a charming shoebox, at the very least.”

Matsukawa cracked open his beer with a soft _pop_ , raised his can to Oikawa, and drank.

Oikawa, who had been caught on the wrong end of one of Matsukawa’s proffered fizzy drinks once too often in their youth, left his Coke long enough for the bubbles to settle, opened it at arm’s length, and took a long, loud slurp once he was satisfied it would not explode in his face. The sweetness of the vanilla lingered on his tongue. He looked out the window at the traffic underneath them, at the power lines draped across the sky and the zelkova trees that lined the sidewalk. It would have been easy enough to find this an idyllic scene. It would have been easy, to let himself be seduced by the cigarette smoke and the narrow walkways, the neon lights dulled by day, the whispers under umbrellas.

It would have been easy, but Oikawa had never been easy.

“I know that look,” said Matsukawa.

“What look?”

“That constipated look you get when you’re having an emotion, but you can’t figure out a smooth way to express it.”

“How _rude_! I’m always smooth!”

Matsukawa said nothing, to that. He leaned forward, arms resting in his lap, beer can still in his hands, and raised his eyebrows with that infuriating patience that Oikawa had never quite been able to wear down.

“Do you miss it?” Matsukawa asked. “Living in the city.”

“To be entirely accurate, I never really _lived_ in a city, you know.”

“Right. And Tokyo wasn’t a city. Neither was Hong Kong. Or Montreal. Or—”

“ _Oh_ , don’t be difficult. I mean... I never really lived in any of those places, did I? I was always passing through.”

Matsukawa’s soft _hmm_ was a hum that invited confidence, a murmur like the shadows behind another school wall, another brick they’d carved their names on and forgotten, until now.

“The only place I’ve ever lived was... was the house where I grew up,” said Oikawa, still staring out of the window at the drizzle. “And the way station.”

“Which still doesn’t have a name.”

“Does your apartment have a name?” Oikawa asked.

“Point,” said Matsukawa.

Oikawa felt his hands tighten round his can of Coke, and then he laughed and it was an autumn wind in his throat, breaking free to carry all the leaves on the trees with it.

“Isn’t that funny, Mattsun?”

“Oikawa,” said Matsukawa solemnly, “I have never once understood the things you find funny.”

“That of all the places I’d set down roots, it would be a place like a way station. A place that isn’t meant for _staying_.”

“Mmmm. On the contrary, I think it’s the perfect place for someone like you.”

Oikawa downed the rest of his Coke in one gulp and tossed the can into the bin beside Matsukawa’s coffee table. It hit the rim, teetered for a moment before tipping inwards, and Oikawa let out a breath, lighter than vanilla, lighter than bubbles.

“You’re right,” he said, and smiled.

 

* * *

 

It was Iwaizumi who noticed the daisies by Oikawa’s pillow, for it was Iwaizumi who woke with the dawn. When he picked one up, pressed it to Oikawa’s earlobe and murmured a scratchy _good morning_ , Oikawa was surprised most of all by the fact that Iwaizumi could see them.

“I thought it was just me,” he said, easing himself upright with a small yawn and wide eyes. There was a small handful of daisies scattered among the petals, enough to make a bracelet. He picked the petals up and let them fall through his fingers like snow. They made a little carpet in the space between his futon and Iwaizumi’s.

“I’ve been finding these everywhere, you know.”

Iwaizumi flicked one in his face. Oikawa scrunched up his nose.

“And?” Iwaizumi asked.

Oikawa pulled his knees up to his chest, determined to remain huddled in his duvet for as long as humanly possible. Iwaizumi was already out of his, cross-legged on his rumpled sheets as he pinned Oikawa down with a look that did not belong to this early hour of the morning, or perhaps any hour at all.

“And what?” Oikawa echoed.

“And you don’t think it’s strange?”

“Of course I think it’s strange. But I have no idea what it means.”

“You’re the plant person. You tell me.”

Oikawa shrugged. He raised his arms overhead in a lazy stretch as he yawned again, and cracked his neck from side to side. “Daisies mean _faith_. But it’s not like I believe in that kind of thing. It’s just flowers.”

Iwaizumi got to his feet, circled Oikawa’s futon so he stood behind him, and jabbed an elbow into his upper back without warning.

“ _Ouch!_ That hurts, Iwa-chan!”

“You’re stiffer than a plank,” Iwaizumi muttered, increasing the pressure. Oikawa let out a strangled grunt and crumpled forwards. Every knot in his shoulders seized up, unwound itself as Iwaizumi kept on pushing. For a second they were two boys in the gym again, Oikawa holding in his complaints behind gritted teeth because it was Iwaizumi and they would fall on deaf ears anyway.

“That’s because you haven’t been here to keep me on my toes,” Oikawa mumbled.

Iwaizumi head-butted him on the back of his head, and Oikawa yelped.

“You know flowers don’t just sprout up around everyone, right?”

“Of course I know!”

Gradually, Iwaizumi let up the pressure on Oikawa’s back. When he stepped away, Oikawa straightened up slowly, uncurled his spine and watched Iwaizumi retreat from the bedroom to brush his teeth.

He wanted to say he missed this, Iwaizumi at his back, but he swallowed it all, let it smoulder inside him and reached for the daisy petals again.

Dispensing with any pretence of making himself presentable, Oikawa got up and headed downstairs in his pyjamas and bedroom slippers. The vine growing up the wall, he could swear, was a whole inch taller today, and the bud at the top had opened just a tiny crack; inside, Oikawa thought he caught a glimpse of a galaxy like a snowscape.

 

* * *

 

When Iwaizumi came down, he was dressed to leave and Oikawa was seated at the kitchen counter, making a daisy chain.

“You look so domestic,” said Iwaizumi.

“You say that like it’s _unbecoming_ , Iwa-chan.”

“It’s just weird. From you.”

Oikawa slipped on his bracelet of daisies, flung a tea towel at Iwaizumi and stood up to attend to the coffee machine.

“One for the road?” he asked, turning to glance over his shoulder. He picked up their jar of coffee capsules, gave it an inviting little shake and opened it. At the top was one of those strong black coffees that Iwaizumi liked so much.

Iwaizumi slung his backpack over his shoulder, glanced out the window and frowned at the mist fogging up the view.

 _One, for staying._ Oikawa felt the counter-offer on the tip of his own tongue, thought he saw it hover, as well, on the farthest reaches of Iwaizumi’s mouth. But Iwaizumi had never said it to him, and never would, for he knew how not to be selfish in a way Oikawa could only ever dream of. All Oikawa had was his own stubborn pride and a lifetime’s worth of practice digging his heels in. It had to be enough. It was enough, for now, and neither of them said anything.

Oikawa could have mapped that mouth of Iwaizumi’s with his eyes closed. If he kissed it this very moment, it would taste like soil between his teeth, smell like rain.

Then it softened, and Iwaizumi nodded.

“Yeah, coffee for the road sounds great. Thanks.”

Oikawa curled his fingers in, palmed the coffee capsule like a magic trick and smiled at Iwaizumi before turning back to pop it into the machine. Iwaizumi’s travel mug sat upside down next to the sink, where he’d left it to dry out just two nights ago.

“One more when you come back,” said Oikawa. “Don’t die out there. I’d hate to run this shack all by myself.”

Iwaizumi snorted. “You couldn’t run it by yourself. The minute the electricity shorted, you’d be on the phone to Matsukawa crying for help.”

“I would _not_! I’ll have you know that since Mattsun taught me what to do _last_ time, I’ve become an expert in circuitry.”

“Sure,” Iwaizumi laughed.

“Don’t die, anyway,” Oikawa added.

The wind rose with his words. There was a whisper in the rafters that sounded like the first strains of a Christmas carol, and a brightening morning light as the sounds of traffic picked up. At the door, Iwaizumi hesitated.

“ _Go_ ,” Oikawa commanded, as he pressed Iwaizumi’s mug into his hands and pushed him out.

 

* * *

 

A _hurricane_ , they used to call him; never staying put, never content, and in the moments when that hush fell upon him, when he sat on the bench during timeouts and held a world of cocooned silence in his hands, in his head, it was not stillness but all of the movement, all of the noise in the world come to a perfect storm, a whirlwind that spun so fast it seemed, to everyone else, to be still.

Sometimes, the storm raged, and he would wake to Iwaizumi’s hands over his ears and a garden of silence on his lips, louder than words.

 _Breathe._ That’s what his coach might have told him, had he panicked on court, or on the sidelines. Iwaizumi never told him anything. Only sat there, on the futon next to his, tangled in blankets.

“I wasn’t dreaming,” Oikawa would say, and Iwaizumi would press his forehead into his, as if he could find a way into Oikawa’s dreams; as if Oikawa could find a way into his. They did not talk about it when the day dawned.

Iwaizumi never talked about his dreams.

Autumn, having grown silver at the tips, slid gracefully off the perch it had made for itself on the rafters and headed for the mountains instead. The stars watched it go before turning their gaze back towards the way station, the dreamer and the dreamless.

If there were whispers among them about which was which, they did not reach Iwaizumi and Oikawa’s ears, and Oikawa continued to reach for a warmth next to him at night which was not always there.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks to Christmas, the first snow hit.

It wasn’t much, to start with. No one would have been out there making snowmen, and Oikawa, who had always found himself missing snow when he spent Christmas in warm places, and promptly hating every bit of it when he returned, found that without someone to grouse to about the frost on their windows and how damned _slippery_ the roads were and how this white stuff was just overrated slush, he was out of excuses to be contrary.

_This is pretty nice, after all, isn’t it?_

His breath slid out from between his lips, a soft puff that hung in the air, drifted away and found a sleeping blade of grass to curl itself around, somewhere in the mountains behind the way station. In this season, the mint green exterior of the house looked appropriately wintry and festive. Iwaizumi had hung up a wreath over their front porch, and last night’s snowfall still clung to it. Oikawa, his arms full of vegetables in brown paper bags and his cheeks pink, nudged the door open with his foot.

The snow at their doorstep was melting. It spilled over the threshold, onto the welcome mat, onto the floor, and into Oikawa’s socks.

 _Shut the damn door, Oikawa!_ , Iwaizumi would have shouted, no doubt, had he been here, but he was gone with the truck and a flippant remark that it would do Oikawa good to get some exercise, the farm down the highway wasn’t _that_ far a walk, just because he wasn’t a professional athlete any more didn’t mean he should let himself get lazy.

Oikawa set his bags down, switched on the lights and shut the damn door.

“So rude, Iwa-chan,” he murmured to himself. It made him feel better, even if no one was listening.

He leaned back against the door and paused for a moment, irresolute. There would be precious few travellers on the highway if the snow kept up like this, and it was awfully tempting to remain closed for the rest of the day, to lose himself in hot chocolate and reruns of all his favourite matches.

It was awfully tempting, and so with a sigh, Oikawa opened the door again, flipped the sign round to _OPEN_ , and put on the kettle.

 

* * *

 

_Don’t be alone, Oikawa._

_I’m never alone._

He’d said it without thinking, in the same glass-light filigreed way he said so much, laughed things off. He was never any less than fine, any less than perfect and invincible and unbreakable personified, after all, and it had been Iwa-chan who’d taught him that; he was never alone, even if he was the only one holding the ball right now.

He’d said it without thinking, and Iwaizumi had seen through him right away.

There was a reality in the touch of his hand, sliding off Oikawa’s shoulder. There was solid ground in his fist now, buried in Oikawa’s back as he turned and walked away, and there were flowers of another sort that grew in Oikawa’s throat, bathed in their own kind of light.

This was his reality: that the rest of life, he was coming to realise, was not a volleyball match, that he had burnt himself at both ends like a candle in his youth, and that it was so much harder to grow gardens in winter.

This was Iwaizumi’s: that in his mid-twenties, his world was still unfolding, and his eyes lit up when he talked about an amazing play the students had made, and Oikawa, who had spent all of their childhood being selfish, would permit himself one final indulgence, the luxury of letting himself be lonely from time to time.

 

* * *

 

At the periphery of Hitachi Seaside Park, overlooking a sea that crashed against the rocks of the shore, Oikawa stuffed his hands in his pockets and curled his toes in his shoes.

“ _Maybe_ checking the park opening hours would have been a good idea,” he said, and sighed.

“We should have known,” said Iwaizumi. “Why _would_ the park stay open after dark?”

“Disneyland stays open after dark,” Oikawa muttered. “There are _fireworks_.”

Iwaizumi looked up and gestured to the night sky.

“There are your fireworks,” he said.

His own short bark of a laugh was the earth turning under its blanket of snow, not so pristine any more. Oikawa reached for the daisy-chain bracelet at his wrist, spun it slowly and plucked a petal off it.

“Well, no Christmas roses, but I’ve got a flower for you here anyway, Iwa-chan. Part of one, at least.“

By moonlight, the petal seemed to glow. Iwaizumi’s eyes widened. He reached up with one hand, and Oikawa was seized with the sudden thought that he might knock it out of his fingers and tell Oikawa he was being silly, and for some reason, the thought made him hang on tighter. He could not have said why, in that moment, he felt that he simply could not lose this offering to the snow. He would have given up prayers to see it safely in Iwaizumi’s hands.

But he did not have to give up any of his prayers, and Iwaizumi did not knock the petal from his fingers and tell him he was being silly.

“Thank you,” he said, and took it.

Between his rough fingertips, it seemed a delicate thing made of fragility and promises, but Iwaizumi held it like he knew just how not to break it.

Oikawa smiled, sat down, and flopped backwards into the snow.

“I’ve always wanted to make a snow angel.”

Iwaizumi sat next to him and shot him a frown. “You _have_ made snow angels. I have photographic evidence of that.”

“I was a _kid_ then. They had tiny wings! They were hardly angels. Baby angels. Cherubs.”

“ _Snow cherub_ has a certain ring to it too.”

Oikawa spread his arms out. “But now I have long arms, because I’m _really tall_ —”

Even in the darkness reflected off the sea, he saw Iwaizumi roll his eyes clearly.

“And I can make angels.”

As he spoke, he swept his arms in a wild arc and turned to face the sky.

Iwaizumi said nothing, for a while. Then he lay back, and wordlessly, started making a snow angel of his own. When they sat up again, their backs were damp and the wingtips of their angels were touching.

“It’s like they’re holding hands,” said Oikawa.

“Idiot,” said Iwaizumi, and grinned. “Angels’ hands are at their chests. Praying. Like _this_. Those are wings.”

“It’s like they’re holding hands,” Oikawa said again, warm and insistent, a starlike fire blooming in his chest as he reached for a handful of snow, made a snowball and flung it into the distance. It soared into the sky and disappeared like a comet.

“If you were trying to hit me with that, your aim’s really gone down the drain,” Iwaizumi remarked.

“As _if_!” Oikawa sniffed. “Maybe I was trying to hit a star. It’d come down into my hands and I could plant it next to my vine in the house.”

Iwaizumi let out a long breath. Oikawa watched it melt into the night air, watched Iwaizumi knit his eyebrows together, that little furrow in his forehead he knew so well.

“Come with me, Oikawa. To Meiji.”

Oikawa gaped at him. “What, first you want me to run the way station, and now you want me to _leave_ it?”

“No, not permanently. They couldn’t afford you anyway. I mean, as a guest, just for one day. I think the team would learn a lot from a national player.”

“Ex-national,” Oikawa murmured, and Iwaizumi cuffed him on the side of his head. Oikawa caught his hand, shoved it away and kicked his ankle for good measure.

“I said I was retired.”

“You’re retired from competitive volleyball. It doesn’t mean you have to leave it behind forever. Don’t be a stubborn ass.”

“I don’t know, Iwa-chan. Who would _fix cars_ if I wasn’t around?”

“ _Oikawa_.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Oikawa, turning to stare back up into the sky.

Iwaizumi grinned like he knew he had won, and they both knew it.

 

* * *

 

Oikawa was thankful that Iwaizumi had got the TV working after all in the end, for were it not for the idle talk show chatter filling the space in the way station, he might have started talking to himself or worse, talking to strangers and children about his decorated heyday. The thought was so mortifying he had to send Iwaizumi an annoying text with a video Hanamaki had shared, of a cat trying to climb curtains, just to stave it off.

In the afternoon, the mounting storm blew in a young couple in need of refuelling and a nap. Oikawa made them chamomile tea, turned off the TV and found a classical station on the radio.

As a piano concerto played on, the snow at the threshold knit itself into a carpet of snowflakes. With a lace-edged whisper tinged with the grey of the road, the silver of the horizon, it sought out the warmth of hope and the light of a reckless promise, and it bloomed, for Oikawa Tooru, as they said, had always had a green thumb.

The next day, the vine growing up the wall started to turn snow white from the roots and the tips of the leaves. Oikawa took a photo and sent it to Iwaizumi.

> _maybe it flowers in winter_

He busied himself the rest of the day taking deliveries of _oden_ stock, checking the gas meter, and brushing off his rusty English with a tourist whose car needed towing. In the afternoon, he searched his wardrobe for a uniform he had not worn in a long time.

His coach had presented it to him when he retired, and it was still pristine, creases ironed in where they’d folded it for him. Oikawa held it at arm’s length and left it on his futon.

(He would not try it on, not now, not yet; he would not try it on till the next morning when he had to wear it out, and it would both delight and unnerve him to find that it still fit, more or less.)

Iwaizumi’s reply came only late at night. Sitting at their back doorstep with the winter wind flapping the ends of his scarf in his face, Oikawa imagined Iwaizumi under the warm glow of a lantern in an _izakaya_ somewhere, a steaming hot bowl of _ramen_ and a pint of beer in front of him. He’d be with the other coaches, popping _edamame_ and _tempura_ and talking about the day’s training; or maybe he was with Kageyama.

Oikawa had not seen Kageyama since he retired, except on TV. It felt strange, thinking of seeing him now as neither teammate nor rival; it _was_ strange, because it was not Kageyama who had changed to make the situation different, but Oikawa.

He opened his own can of vanilla Coke with a small _pop_ , thought of absent friends and took a swig as he clicked on the message.

> _You know what they say about plants that thrive in adversity._
> 
> _that they’re the most beautiful? (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧_

He hit send before he could think about it. There was a time he would not have thought about it before saying such a thing to Iwaizumi, when he would have called himself _beautiful_ without a care, every day, and Iwaizumi would have punched him on the arm and scowled.

Now, it was not so much that Oikawa thought himself no longer beautiful. In truth, he had never thought himself all that beautiful in the first place; it was just that it had been _fun_ , saying this sort of thing to keep Iwaizumi on his toes, and perhaps, as time had passed them by, a part of him had grown tired of little games.

Oikawa slumped back against the half-open door and let out a huge yawn. Inside, the radio played on. The classical station had switched to piano renditions of Christmas tunes, tinkling softly like a music box. Oikawa closed his eyes and imagined himself just so, a figure in a music box. How the snow twirled, twirled around him, and stayed on his hair and his eyelashes and never melted, for he carried a world of glass and ice inside of him—

His phone beeped. Oikawa blinked his eyes open. Iwaizumi’s answer was straightforward, as always.

> _Yeah. Go to sleep. See you tomorrow. Don’t get lost on the train._
> 
> _p l s bye_

 

* * *

 

_One._

Oikawa breathed in, counted, and listened.

There were no cheers here, on this court. There was no one calling his name. In place of spotlights there was a wintry sunlight glinting off frost on the pathway, bated breath and every pair of eyes on him.

_Two._

He spun the ball in between his hands. His head snapped upwards.

_Three._

This was not a stage he had stood on before. It didn’t matter. He started his run-up, revelled in the silence and the echoes and the sound his shoes made on the polished floorboards, and sent the ball flying into the air.

When he jumped, a thousand little fissures running through his body knit themselves together again, just for a moment, and feel off the ball hitting his palm was perfect, far too perfect—

So, too, was Iwaizumi waiting for the toss the way he always had, and the spike he made. Standing on the same side of the net as him once more after all these years, Oikawa could swear he saw the ground swell to meet them, that every blade of sleeping grass outside felt the earth shake, and stirred from their slumber for a moment.

Iwaizumi was still staring at his palm when he landed. It took him a second to lift his eyes to meet Oikawa’s, another second for the rest of the world to catch up with them.

And Oikawa, in the shadow of his former glory, exulted in the light; he tasted it on his exhale and the sweat that caught on his parted lips, and he flexed his fingers and looked straight into that gaze of Iwaizumi’s.

His smile, when it finally broke out on his face, was the smile of someone who had once been kissed by victory, and who still bore the scars on that beautiful mouth of his.

 

* * *

 

Iwaizumi was waiting outside the gym when Oikawa finished signing the last autograph, posing for the last selfie. The sight of him, lounging against the wall in his old beat-up sneakers, the jacket he’d been wearing since he was a freshman and the new beanie Oikawa had bought him last Christmas, made Oikawa feel like all the knots in his back were coming undone again, melted the picture-perfect smile right off his face.

“You’ve still got it,” Iwaizumi said, and tossed him a can of Pocari Sweat.

Oikawa caught it. He went over, slumped against Iwaizumi, and rested his head on his shoulder without preamble.

“I’ve still got something, I guess,” he conceded. “I’ve still got you.”

“Glad I’m something.”

Oikawa cracked the can open and straightened with an exaggerated groan.

“Iwa-chan, why didn’t you grow just a few centimetres taller than me so I could stand next to you and lean on you properly without getting a neck ache—”

“As if I’d want that!”

“Don’t lie to me! I know you wish you were taller than me!”

“Not for such a stupid reason,” said Iwaizumi, and kneed him in the shin.

Oikawa laughed. He took a deep, long drink of Pocari Sweat.

“You’ve got more than me,” Iwaizumi added. His gaze flicked back towards the gym, the lights dimmed now. “You really showed everyone what you could do.”

“ _Past tense_ being the operative part here, Iwa-chan.”

“What, are you grumbling because you’re not in the same top condition you were in as a national player? Don’t be a dumbass, Oikawa.”

“It’s not that,” said Oikawa.

Iwaizumi fixed Oikawa with a steady glare, the same glare he used to give him on days Oikawa was stubborn about extra practice, or refused to admit he was catching a cold, or insisted on running too far down the river in pursuit of an interesting butterfly.

“Then what is it? Talk to me.”

Oikawa pressed his lips together. _You never had to ask before. You always knew, when I didn’t know how to say it. You always knew, and you were never afraid to say it, even if you knew it would hurt me._

It was unfair to Iwaizumi, and he knew it. He looked down into his open hands, expecting, maybe, to find a fistful of daisies he could hold on to, a fistful of faith. He might have been half-lying, when he said he didn’t believe in things like that; there were times, after all, he _was_ awfully good at these little deceptions.

“It was perfect,” he whispered. “It felt perfect. Being on the court again. Tossing to you. Me and you.”

Iwaizumi, mouth half-open as if a snappy retort was right at the tip of his tongue, said nothing. It was only when Oikawa breathed in, let out a long sigh that Iwaizumi looked away, buried his reaction in a cough behind one gloved hand. The colour on his cheeks was deepening.

“I think that’s what scared me, Iwa-chan. That I left a world behind, and when the chance came, I fell back into it so easily.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have left, then,” Iwaizumi murmured.

Oikawa swallowed. There was a bitterness in his throat, as perfect as anything he had tasted that day, and all the Pocari Sweat could not wash it away.

“Do you really think so?” he said, softly. “Do you really think I wouldn’t be _anything_ , without volleyball?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Iwaizumi snapped.

The sandpaper roughness of his voice met Oikawa’s own jagged edges in the gentlest of ways. Iwaizumi rubbed the bridge of his nose with a tired sigh.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sorry, okay? Let’s go home.”

“Don’t be sorry,” said Oikawa, fiercely. He smiled, a smile illuminated by the glow of city lights, a smile he had not smiled for a while. “It creeps me out to hear you apologise to me.”

“Stupid Oikawa,” Iwaizumi muttered, and led the way to the truck.

 

* * *

 

When he opened the front door, the floor was covered with snow.

At least, that was what Oikawa thought at first, by the faint traces of moonlight that had followed them in from the road; it was not until he took a step in that he realised it was not snow but daisies, so many daisies lying carpet-thick and peeking out from from every crevice, every splinter in the wooden planking, faith for the picking.

He bent down, ran his hand through the flurry of soft white petals, and as he heard the _click_ of the truck keys in their lock, Iwaizumi’s footsteps coming up behind him, the entire blanket of daisies melted away as if the wind had swept through the way station, and carried all of them to the mountains, to the sea.

Only the vine remained on the wall. It was white from root to tip now, and it had almost reached the ceiling, where a Christmas wish wrapped in faint ribbons of light waited breathlessly for it.

“What are you doing?” Iwaizumi asked, stopping short behind Oikawa, who was still crouched down with his shoes on.

“Nothing,” Oikawa murmured. He stood up and unfurled his fist. There was nothing left in it, and on his wrist, he noticed, the daisy chain was faintly glowing. “Nothing at all.”

 

* * *

 

That night, they both woke at the same time, sat up in their futons; it was snowing again outside and it was not Iwaizumi who reached to keep Oikawa safe this time. It was Oikawa who blinked, stared into the long winter night and found a thought pricking the back of his mind, like mistletoe.

“It’s Christmas Eve, isn’t it.”

Iwaizumi looked at the LED alarm clock he kept beside his bed.

“It’s long past midnight.”

“I guess it’s Christmas, then,” Oikawa whispered.

They did not say _Merry Christmas_ , merely sat side by side, watching the snow fall. There was no more traffic to be heard. They could not see the stars any more, only a flurry of white, and these, too, were constellations, but they kept shifting and shifting and Oikawa could not hold any of them, no more than he could hold the stars themselves.

“I wasn’t dreaming,” said Oikawa. This time, he knew it was true.

“I was,” said Iwaizumi, and Oikawa knew that was true, too.

 

* * *

 

The morning dawned, and at the bottom of the stairs, there waited two things: a conversation Oikawa did not know how to have, for once in his life, and the biggest mug of hot chocolate he had ever seen.

Iwaizumi was standing at the foot of the stairwell, on his way up. He stopped where he was and held the mug out towards Oikawa.

Oikawa went down to meet him halfway, took the mug, and catapulted himself straight into it with his usual finesse.

“You know, Iwa-chan, I’m really kind of messed up.”

Iwaizumi’s eyebrows shot up. “Tell me something I don’t know?”

Oikawa clenched his hands tight round the mug. The marshmallows were melting on the surface of the chocolate. Iwaizumi had put in a ton extra, and cinnamon sprinkles, just the way Oikawa liked it.

“I told you you should be selfish, right? All these years, you stayed put and watched me leave, and keep leaving, and the thing is, Iwa-chan, I’m not like you. I’m not strong enough or patient enough to deal with it like you did, and it felt _amazing_ to stand on a court again, but I’m also a _stubborn asshole_ who hates giving up and this shack is still kind of shitty sometimes but it’s _our_ shitty shack, you know, and I think I’ve grown rather attached to it—”

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi cut him off, his voice steady. “You’re rambling.”

Oikawa bit down on his lower lip to shut himself up, raised the mug and drank.

Iwaizumi took a deep breath. The sound was earth crumbling through Oikawa’s fingers.

“Do you know why I asked you to come here with me? To make _something_ of this place, together?”

 _Because you saw how lost I was after retiring. Because I had nothing else to do. Because you felt sorry for me._ Usually, words melted like sugar on Oikawa’s tongue. He made a habit of savouring them, swirling them around his mouth before he spoke, picking the instances where they would be his weapon or his olive branch, and they would be painfully beautiful either way.

These words did not melt. They froze up in the wintry midnight chill and refused to budge. It did not mean they were less true, or more. It did not mean anything at all, only that Oikawa Tooru, who had never been a genius, was confronted once more with his own fragile, stubborn humanity, and Iwaizumi’s too.

“Because you love me,” he murmured, and tilted his chin to meet Iwaizumi’s gaze.

Iwaizumi pressed his forearm into the wall. He clenched his hand into a fist that Oikawa could swear would leave a mark, etched in idiocies and so many careless promises, from the broken to the lightly splintered. Things they had said when they were younger. Things they had said over long-distance texts. Things he had only thought, in letters unsent.

“Because, without you, nothing would bloom,” said Iwaizumi.

At Iwaizumi’s side, the topmost bud of the snow-vine blossomed at last, a lace-like sigh unfurling into the early hour.

 _Oh,_ Oikawa found himself thinking, as he looked up in wonder. It had grown beyond his reach, but he did not need to be close to it to see exactly what it was.

_It’s... a daisy._

Daisies, he knew, did not grow from vines. Nor were they particularly exciting flowers, for they were everywhere to be found by the roadside and the highway. But that was the thing about them: they dotted the landscape, no matter how rough the road got; they found places to set down roots in concrete cracks and dry soil, in the shadow of a row of sunflowers, wherever Oikawa went, or up a wall in a way station without a name, a house that was neither coming nor going, neither staying nor leaving. A particular sort of home, for a particular sort of person.

All the buds were opening now. The light they made was a blinding galaxy, and if the all the tiny daisy petals, all the snowflakes were stars, Oikawa could be lost here forever putting a name to each of them; he was transfixed where he stood, his hot chocolate cooling and the snowfall quietly, quietly, at their window. It was Iwaizumi reaching over, Iwaizumi’s hand on his, that brought him back to earth. One hand, then another.

“Your garden of stars,” said Iwaizumi, as he stared in awe. “It was here all along, huh?”

_So were you._

“A garden of faith,” Oikawa corrected, smiling.

He set his mug down on the step, plucked the daisy chain off his wrist, and let it go. One petal broke off, remained nestled against the warmth still lingering in his palm. He let it stay there as the rest of the daisy chain spun in the air, rose to find its place among the constellations in Oikawa’s garden. The _deflated volleyball_ , as Iwaizumi had once called it.

Oikawa saw fireworks. The world spun. Iwaizumi reached up to hold him.

“I don’t have the answers for what you should do with the rest of your life. I don’t even have the answers for me,” he said. Roots wound their way from ground up into the firm grip of his arms. “But who said we have to have them, anyway?”

Oikawa kept his eyes open as his heart bloomed like starfire, and he gazed up at the rafters that he so loved. There was nothing out of the ordinary there now, just high beams and a wintry morning’s mist that soaked up the sunlight.

He wasn’t dreaming. He was living, and he was growing, in any way he could. It was enough.

 

* * *

 

The ground was full of angels.

Oikawa had run out after dinner, no longer in search of stars; he had flopped down on the fresh layer of crunchy snow and made angels until his arms got tired. It was only now, standing up and facing the highway, that he felt the cold settle into his bones, hugged himself tight for warmth and blew into his hands until his breath was fog on the air, and then turned around and ran all the way back. The angels watched him go, sent quiet blessings in his wake that Oikawa did not see. They surrounded him like so many little halos made of daisy chains.

 _Please,_ he thought as he raced through the snow. _Please let it still be before midnight—_

As he approached, the light on the back porch flickered on, and the back door opened a crack. Iwaizumi peeked out, squinting into the night.

“Thought I heard you coming,” he said.

“What time is it?” Oikawa asked, a shaky hand coming to rest on the doorframe. It was wreathed in holly and ivy and fairy lights, homespun and rough.

Iwaizumi stared, and glanced down at his digital watch. It flashed _11:59_ in the darkness.

“Come in already. It’s freezing outside,” he said, looking back up.

And Oikawa laughed, the laughter of a world that went on turning, and he reached out, grabbed Iwaizumi’s face in both of his hands and kissed him.

“Merry Christmas, Iwa-chan,” he said, at last, reaching for Iwaizumi’s hand as he entered. There was a new vine sprouting on the doorstep and a petal in his palm that would not fade.

 


End file.
